WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration\u2019s emergency appeal.
\nThe court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to his native country over fears he would face persecution from local gangs.
\nUS District Judge Paula Xinis had ordered Abrego Garcia, now being held in a notorious Salvadoran prison, returned to the United States by midnight Monday.
\n\u201cThe order properly requires the Government to \u2018facilitate\u2019 Abrego Garcia\u2019s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,\u201d the court said in an unsigned order with no noted dissents.
\nIt comes after a string of rulings on the court\u2019s emergency docket where the conservative majority has at least partially sided with Trump amid a wave of lower court orders slowing the president\u2019s sweeping agenda.
\nIn Thursday\u2019s case, Chief Justice John Roberts had already pushed back Xinis\u2019 deadline. The justices also said that her order must now be clarified to make sure it doesn\u2019t intrude into executive branch power over foreign affairs, since Abrego Garcia is being held abroad. The court said the Trump administration should also be prepared to share what steps it has taken to try to get him back \u2014 and what more it could potentially do.
\nThe administration claims Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, though he has never been charged with or convicted of a crime. His attorneys said there is no evidence he was in MS-13.
\nThe administration has conceded that it made a mistake in sending him to El Salvador, but argued that it no longer could do anything about it.
\nThe court\u2019s liberal justices said the administration should have hastened to correct \u201cits egregious error\u201d and was \u201cplainly wrong\u201d to suggest it could not bring him home.
\n\u201cThe Government\u2019s argument, moreover, implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U. S. citizens, without legal consequence, so long as it does so before a court can intervene,\u201d Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, joined by her two colleagues.
\nAbrego Garcia\u2019s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, said the ordeal has been an \u201cemotional rollercoaster\u201d for their family and the entire community.
\n\u201cI am anxiously waiting for Kilmar to be here in my arms, and in our home putting our children to bed, knowing this nightmare is almost at its end. I will continue fighting until my husband is home,\u201d she said.
\nOne of his lawyers, Simon Sandoval-Moshenburg, said \u201ctonight, the rule of law prevailed,\u201d and he encouraged the government to \u201cstop wasting time and get moving.\u201d
\nIn the district court, Xinis wrote that the decision to arrest Abrego Garcia and send him to El Salvador appears to be \u201cwholly lawless.\u201d There is little to no evidence to support a \u201cvague, uncorroborated\u201d allegation that Abrego Garcia was once in the MS-13 street gang, Xinis wrote.
\nThe 29-year-old was detained by immigration agents and deported last month.
\nHe had a permit from the Homeland Security Department to legally work in the US and was a sheet metal apprentice pursuing a journeyman license, his attorney said. His wife is a US citizen.
\nTricia McLaughlin, assistant DHS secretary for public affairs, said Thursday that the justices\u2019 order for clarification from the lower court was a win for the administration. \u201cWe look forward to continuing to advance our position in this case,\u201d she said.
\nAn immigration judge had previously barred the US from deporting Abrego Garcia to El Salvador in 2019, finding that he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
\nA Justice Department lawyer conceded in a court hearing that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi later removed the lawyer, Erez Reuveni, from the case and placed him on leave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The Supreme Court on Thursday said the Trump administration must work to bring back a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to prison in El Salvador, rejecting the administration\u2019s emergency appeal. The court acted in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who had an immigration court order preventing his deportation to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":79491,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79493,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79477\/revisions\/79493"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}